SMALL HOOKS 349 



All worm hooks, from the largest to the smallest, should be 

 of the Carlisle or round bend. No other hook admits of 

 putting on a worm so well, neatly, or quickly. 



I now come to roach hooks, and probably more thought 

 and care have been bestowed on them than upon all the 

 others put together ; and yet many of the patterns are not 

 only bad but execrable. As a rule, the shanks are almost 

 always too short to strike properly. Take an ordinary short- 

 shanked roach hook, just fix the point in a stout piece of paper, 

 pull the gut gently, and see what ensues, and the position the 

 hook takes. The shank of the hook and the gut will form a 

 small obtuse angle ; in some cases, almost a right angle. The 

 whole strain falls on the inside of the point instead of directly 

 on the point ; you may pull, but the effect is not to force the 

 point in, but to tear the hook open. Consequently, with such 

 a hook, when the short sharp stroke peculiar to roach fishing 

 is given, the hook springs instead of burying the point and 

 barb, unless the wire of the hook be so coarse and unyielding 

 as to refuse to spring, when a much harder stroke than would 

 be necessary if the hook were of the proper shape may perhaps 

 effect the object. But it has been the practice of roach fishers 

 to discard hooks of coarse wire and to insist upon having a 

 hook with a very fine wire, in order that the gentle or maggot 

 which so many use for a bait may be threaded on the hook with 

 the least possible damage, and the consequence of this has been 

 that anglers have considered the bait too much for the hook, 

 and consequently they have been using the very worst possible 

 hook they could adopt for their purpose very short in the 

 shank, round and broad in the bend, with (if anything) an out- 

 turned point instead of an in-turned one, and fine in the wire 

 so as to spring rather than penetrate, consequently the point 

 only gets fixed, the fish gives a turn over, or comes half-way 

 home, and gets off ; and when this occurs often, it spoils sport, 

 as it by no means improves a roach swim to have a dozen or so 

 of well-pricked fish in it. I have seen hook after hook of the 

 above description positively give and open and become 

 utterly useless in a dozen swims, and so, no doubt, have many 

 of my readers. If roach fishers must have hooks of this shape, 

 the wire must of necessity be coarse to give any chance of 

 hooking at all a fair proportion of fish. I, however, greatly 

 prefer a hook with a turned-in point and a shank of sufficient 

 length. I got Mr. Wright, the tackle maker in the Strand, to 

 have some made of this shape some time since, and they 



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